The desire to be safe and secure—as to one's person, property, and identity—is fundamental. As communication technology has improved over the years—such as with the creation of digital communications, cellular and other wireless networks, broadband and the Internet—so has the ability to protect the things that matter most. At the same time, these changes in technology have made personal protection more complex. People are physically more mobile today, are in their homes less. More activities are taking place outside the home and via mobile devices. Accordingly, most site security and automation systems today are accessible and controllable directly from a smart phone or other mobile device.
However, these mobile applications require a careful balance between ease of use and security. These applications typically have lower levels of authentication security to make the application more user-friendly, providing a better customer experience. Increasing the level of security in these mobile applications would make the application more difficult to use, which negatively impacts the user experience and reduces the usability of the application. This creates a significant challenge in mobile applications for site security and automation, because a mobile device can be misplaced or stolen, and thus may be more vulnerable to allowing unauthorized access to an individual's security system—which can put individuals at risk of harm to themselves, their property, and their privacy.
Conventional voice authentication technology has been considered as one solution to this problem, where the end-user's voice is used for login authentication. However, such voice authentication technology may not be sufficiently secure for mobile site security and automation applications, or making it more secure would make create the same usability issues.
Multi-tiered and multi-factor authentication processes have been used in a number of contexts to enhance security when accessing systems online, particularly from mobile devices. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 8,583,498 describes a system and method for biometrics-based fraud prevention. U.S. Pat. No. 8,151,326 describes using audio in N-factor authentication. And, U.S. Pat. No. 7,766,223 describes a method and system for mobile services using a unique identification number associated with a mobile device and a user account, and employing enhanced multi-factor and biometric security authentication in conducting transactions using the mobile device. However, these multi-tiered and multi-factor authentication systems are not directed to monitoring systems such as security systems and home automation systems.